Study finds lead in 20 percent of baby foods

Somewhat baffling to researchers is the fact that baby foods rank worse than regular foods. Perhaps processing is to blame? Think about sources for lead exposure, and it’s usually water pipes and old paint peelings that come to mind. An alarming new study from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), however, has found that food is a surprising source of lead contamination – in particular, baby food, which showed higher levels of lead than regular food. EDF examined 11 years’ worth of data (2003-2013) collected by the Food & Drug Administration’s Total Diet Study, which was started in the 1970s to track metals, pesticides, and nutrients in food. It found that 20 percent of 2,164 baby food samples and 14 percent of 10,064 regular food samples had detectable lead levels. The worst baby food culprits were grape juice (89 percent of samples contained lead), sweet potatoes (86 per...